Oh, come on! The "I wouldn't want to split a check with Bernie Sanders" line was funny, even for those of us who dislike pretty much all Democrats (including Colbert). I did laugh out loud on that one.

What's with O'Malley and the MMA stare down on Chafee? I thought he was going Al Gore and was gonna walk up on Chafee and chest bump him. Good imitation of Bernie and gag on splitting the check with him. Pretty soft on Madame Senator, of course.

I notice that Irish-Catholic Democrats especially seem to love denigrating the same socialist democratic policy aims that they cheered for when they were championed by FDR.

The only explanation I can come up with is FDR's party included the Southern segregationists who were later lost to Republicans by Pat Buchanan's design during the Nixon administration. Irish Americans traditionally had the worst enmity against blacks because the latter were the only group that was considered beneath even them.

And then they got swept up in Reagan's (and Buckley's) cheers for capitalism as if free markets were a new idea. But judging by the way even Catholic conservatives have so soured on Pope Frank, you have to conclude that they see a completely deregulated capitalism as a necessary rebellion against even the social justice mission that their religion emphasizes as an over-riding priority.

I think it's a tension between the supposed love of poverty and hierarchical authority that was always a defining hallmark of traditional Christianity (i.e. Catholicism) and the fact that prosperity and the policies that encourage it are necessary. So they're left in a complete rebellion against even the slightest hint of public, political concern for the poor and see no middle ground between capitalism and safety nets at all.

I'm no fan of Colbert but his bit was funny. He nailed Bernie's love of the "percents". And I thought the same thing when Hill did the "Cut it out" line. I'm imaging Bill saying the "Don't make me come up there" line but he's in the next bedroom with the maid.

Ridicule the phrase "percent" all you want. It resonates with the people obviously, and is simply a restatement of how deficiently constrained opportunity happens to be in America. I suppose politicians used to be fonder of that previous reference (to opportunity), but the people caught on and now realize how much of a bullshit sham it is that you have to be a multi-millionaire to effectively influence the government. So that old rhetoric of "opportunity" is as useless as a corset, and just as constricting. The people now know that class warfare was declared on them at the top on down, and they're not pulling any punches back in how they're willing to hear it described.

The guy simply happens to be numerate. So Colbert plays to the cheap laughs of the idiots of America who happily applaud their decreasing wealth and purchasing power, as long as it's an insult against people who can use numbers and measure things.

Let him insult Bernie's adeptness with numbers, or payment of a check. That leaves Colbert left with the only hack standing - The Papa Bear in a Pantsuit - Good ole Hillary. Yep, she knows how to dumb down the debate and chop up the substance of it in the way that Colbert's people will appreciate.

Yes, well: O'Malley is a second-stringer, and he has ambitions to be someone's Veep. The only time anyone bothered with him was when he prompted Bernie to huff, "You haven't been in the United States Senate, you young whippersnapper!"

(Okay, I may have made up those last three words, but they were clearly there in the subtext.)

Was Bernie running those years? With anywhere near the support that he's now getting?

As for consistency, he's just being consistent with the politics of one of America's greatest presidents, and the Democratic president with the greatest legacy: FDR.

As I said earlier, it's astounding to me that Republicans are obsessed with being the next iteration of a 2nd or 3rd tier Republican like Reagan - but that Democrats are too stupid to run on the legacy of FDR. I guess that must be because his legacy stayed intact for 35 years. 35 years until Reagan ran, started a trend of tearing it all down, and now got Americans to wonder how suddenly everything went wrong.

Some day soon the fact, uncontradicted fact, that FDR's policies deepened and worsened the Great Depression will be acknowledged by a Democrat somewhere. Perhaps somebody in Japan will say it, after following a similar path these last 25 years.

Further, eventually Democrats will quit repeating the false claim of the Southern Strategy that worked so well the South flipped two generations after it was never started by anybody.

I will be long dead before I find that honest Democrat. But I remain hopeful.

Rhythm and Balls said...The guy simply happens to be numerate. So Colbert plays to the cheap laughs of the idiots of America who happily applaud their decreasing wealth and purchasing power, as long as it's an insult against people who can use numbers and measure things. 10/15/15, 8:32 PM

LOL! Yeah Sanders is real capable with numbers, a real genius as evidenced by his widely ridiculed tweet from this morning wondering why interest rates are different for student loans and home loans? Yeah this guy is one of the great thinkers of our time-ROFLMAO! He's NUMERATE! LMAO! Oh lord, this moron is a Bernie voter from the get-go. Propaganda spouting anti-American bigot with all his facts backwards, utterly at odds with common sense, fueled with hatred and self-righteousness. In other words, an angry ignorant asshole- just like Bernie! No wonder why the average Sanders supporters are so similar to the disgraceful OWS dirtbags.

In (related? unrelated?) newsieness, while most likely also tangential and yet at least in part truthy, another situation/context of the day links Ivanka Trump and Chelsea Clinton as connected in person as well.

Yeah Sanders is real capable with numbers, a real genius as evidenced by his widely ridiculed tweet from this morning wondering why interest rates are different for student loans and home loans?

There's a different probability of paying it back. A person can't lose his degree in a foreclosure, or be forced to sell it in order not to be foreclosed on, not can a degree be repossessed and sold at auction.

Now you could argue, if a student loan is federally guaranteed, and contains no detailed preparation fees, why shouldn't student loan rates be lower? But they are not guaranteed that way.

Why is the headline of the newspaper not "Elderly Agree Not to Discuss Email"? Somehow Bernie is old but Hillary isnt? Colbert isnt allowed to land any actual punches on Hilary.

Hilary told the Wall Street guys to "knock it off" but they were too high on coke to listen to her. Poor Hillary, in the right but ignored. And jokes about *Bill* Clinton. Is he running for something, that the press need fulfill their first amendment by to fisking him?

The ridiculous spectacle from 2008 of Obama appointing himself to the Office of the President Elect is being revisited. Now Hillary has appointed herself the Candidate Elect before any votes are cast and the job of the press is to ridicule any pretenders to the throne.

Also, any candidate worth his/her salt after Hillary's so-called "knock it off" speech to Wall Street before the meltdown would've retorted "All lot of good that did." or "so they won't listen to you even when you're President?" or "so you're admitting your hapless against the financial powers of this country"

FDR came into office at 19% unemployment and left it at less than 2% but in the deluded imaginations of Birkel's fever dreams this was an example of the "fact, uncontradicted fact, that FDR's policies deepened and worsened the Great Depression".

And I have a lot more trust for the accuracy of what Lee Atwater, Pat Buchanan and other Republicans (who actually had important jobs working for their party and its strategies) had to say about the Southern strategy than I do some pseudonymous, unpaid keyboard warrior named "Birkel" has to say about it while laboring away, unpaid, in the trenches of internet comments sections.

Here is what Buckley himself, perhaps the chief ideological architect of "conservatism's" return to political dominance had to say about race-relations - IN 1957:

"the central question that emerges... is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas where it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes—the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race."

It takes either a shitload of denial or being hit in the head with a shovel to deny the meaning of that statement, given the importance of the guy saying it. But Birkel will do that much. It's just one more kind of denial required of his sort of partisanship. Buckley himself retracted and expressed "regret" for what he wrote. But somehow goons like Birkel will pretend that it either wasn't wrong, or didn't reflect the sentiments of Americans among his readership or ideological movement.

Being a Republican conservative in 2015 means not only incompetently running the government and denying all patronage inconvenient evidence important to making policy in America, but pretending the chief architect of your party's and faction's rise to political power didn't say or mean or find any agreement the things he actually said.

I'm so glad I'm not in his position. Imagine the denial! Day-in, day-out, find things to deny. Don't live life, don't enjoy things, reflect and think about nothing. Just find ways to make life fit into the goals of the RNC. How boring and creepy!